When it comes to legacy, many people don’t play because they are afraid, when they have no reason to be. Lets observe some of the common areas:
1) Its too big! How do I even start?
Here’s the trick: Just play whatever you want. I remember someone joking that the tag-line for the format is “Legacy: Is that even a real deck?” You can seriously do whatever the heck you want. If you have some of the powerful cards in type 2 from the last couple years, you can probably build a reasonable deck. Or just pick a standard deck from some of Magic’s more powerful standard formats, and tune it a bit. You can probably do whatever you want. Last night I saw Krark-Clan Ironworks and monoblack discard with Bloodgasts and smallpox. Both of these decks were beating some of the so-called “better” decks.
Do you have Snapcasters for type 2? Still got those Stoneforge Mystics and Batterskulls? Bitterblossoms gathering dust? Piles of Duresses and Inquisitions from random drafts? Congratulations, you probably own a legacy deck.
2) Its too expensive!
Its only expensive if you want to wear the expense. There are plenty of options available to have a bunch of fun games without breaking the bank. Many players just use decks they had from back in the day, with a few updates.
This probably covers the first point more, but all you really need to do to build a legacy deck is to jam a bunch of powerful cards from your collection together, and presto! You have a deck. Several months ago, a player showed up without a deck, and we managed to build him a deck starting with a type 2 Darkblade deck, and a collection of cards I had lying around (Bitterblossoms, a Jitte, Vendillion Clique, Swords to Plowshares). His deck had the potential to easily 3-0 (a few misplays stopped this from happening, but that’s not the point 
)
So start sifting through your collection. Look at your card. Is it objectively powerful? Great, put it in your legacy deck.
3) But what about dual lands? I’ll never afford a manabase!
You know what the funny thing is about mana? Every year they put out some kind of random dual land for standard. These will never be as good as the original duals. But they’re just about good enough. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve built a mana base that get laughed at, but they help me cast my spells, so who cares? I only own 2 dual lands total, of the 40, and I get by ok.
For example, this is the mana base I was copying from last night:
2 Bayou
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
1 Riptide Laboratory
2 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wasteland
Dayam that’s expensive! So I just used what I owned, and got this:
1 Bayou
1 Overgrown Tomb
3 Misty Rainforest (I own 4 but couldn’t find them lol)
3 Polluted Delta (same here)
1 Tropical Island
1 Breeding Pool
2 Watery Grave
2 Drowned Catacomb (lol)
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Wasteland
1 Creeping Tar Pit (get in there!)
The options I generally look at when building cheap manabases for legacy:
- Dual lands – if you have them / can borrow
- Ravnica shocklands – again if you have them / can borrow
- Fetchlands – if you have even 1 of each dual/shockland that you need, then fetches are totally worth it. Run some basics and dodge those wastelands!
- Scars Duals, these are pretty good for decks that want to win in the early game, and if there’s a bunch of wastelands in the field then you’ll never have 4 land anyway
- Painlands, these are super cheap. You don’t want to play many but 2 painlands to fill out your manabase is fine.
- M10 Duals / Innistrad Duals, its fine to play 1-2 of these if you have a fetch/dual package, because you’ll always have those land types! Score!
Basically, don’t baulk at the idea of building a manabase if you don’t have the full set of a land. Running dodgy off-colour fetches with 2 dual land targets is something I’ve been doing for years.
4) Its all turn 1 combos!
Not true! Sometimes people do get turn one combos. Yes, it can happen. It really doesn’t happen that often. The decks that do this are often very easy to disrupt with common cards such as Duress, Daze, Spell Pierce, and Inquisition of Kozilek. These cards you probably already own as most of them were recently in type 2.
Someone described the format to me as “a flurry of excitement on turn one and two, followed by a cripple-fight.” That definitely sums up many matchups. As long as you respect that there might be *some* craziness afoot, and prepare for it with disruption, you’ll do fine.
5) I’m still a few key cards short
Borrow, borrow, borrow. The local community is pretty good about lending cards for a 4 hour event. So ask!
